The Exercises

Posted by
G Michael Vasey

May
28

Our book features a number of exercises. The exercises are meant to help both reinforce the concepts outlined in the book as well as to guide you in a voyage of inner discover regarding the hexagram. However, to be effective they must be followed somewhat rigorously and we strongly recommend that you note your reflections, thoughts and realizations down in a well structured magical diary. Include as you do so not just the daily exercises but any other realizations that you might have during the day and also any dreams that you recall during your study of the hexagram.

The exercises are designed to take a week each of six daily meditations with a rest day on the seventh day of the week. Each meditation session should last between 15 and 45 minutes. You may commence meditation with whatever opening sequence you are familiar with but you should absolutely invoke the Qabbalistic Cross prior to beginning each daily exercise.

Depending on the results obtained, readers may wish to repeat each week’s meditations several times before moving onto the next set of exercises. Repetition of each set of exercises up to four times may be useful in reinforcing the concepts and providing layers of insights and realizations. This is entirely up to the individual.

Here is the first set of exercises;

The Hexagram and the ElementsWeek One: Fire is the First bornDay One:
Before commencing the meditation session, draw a triangle with its single point upwards on a large piece of tracing paper. Study your drawing and then place the triangle you have drawn into memory so that you can easily visualise the triangle that represents the element of Fire.
Meditate on and visualise this symbol as clearly as you possibly can, holding the image firmly in the mind’s eye, while reflecting on the nature of elemental Fire as both hot and expansive. Think of the qualities discussed earlier in this book. Try to connect to the polarities implicit in the characteristics of Fire.

Day Two:
Meditate further on the polarity implicit in elemental Fire. Try to find as many examples of this polarity and then visualise them in action. After your meditation session, write the polar opposites down on the two basal points of your Fire triangle diagram.

Day Three:
Meditate on how the polarities that you came up with yesterday can be reconciled. Explore the single third point of the Fire triangle – what is it? What does it represent? What happens when you think of reconciling the pairs of polar opposites you have thought of? Write down anything that you come up with on your Fire triangle diagram.

Day Four:
Visualise the Fire triangle again and try to keep in mind the ideas and realisations that you have come up with so far and written on your diagram. The idea is to try to hold the triangle in mind as a whole including the ideas on polarities and their reconciliation in totality. Try not to visualise the triangle as it is on the paper with notes scribbled around it, but as a whole and complete symbol with the ideas of polarity inherent within it. Record any additional realisations as well as how this makes you feel.

Day Five:
Today, you will build a mental picture of a fire. Imagine the flames licking upwards in multiple colours, feel the heat of the fire on your skin, smell the acrid smell of the smoke from the fire and try to hear the sound of the fuel burning and crackling and spitting. See the fire. Picture it clearly. See the action of its burning.

Use any aid to this visualisation that you can. For example, recall memories of a beach bonfire or Guy Faulks’ night bonfire that you experienced as a child. Call up the smell of wood smoke. Feel the heat on the side of your body turned to the flame; watch the pictures forming in the embers of red and gold and note the blackened, silvered timbers as they burn. Be childlike in your exploration of this image, sounds and smell of fire. Enjoy the Fire and be totally absorbed by it.

Day Six:
Rebuild your mental picture of Fire as you did yesterday. Feel it, smell it, hear it…and then go one step further. Now, become the Fire. Be fire. Burn as a flame rising upwards. Dance and flicker, become all the qualities of pure flame. Become the flames, become the fire. Imagine what it is like to be a Fire. What emotions do you feel? What sensations?

Record your feelings, insights and experience in as much detail as you are able.